The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

VXers dabble in mobile spyware

First contact

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

Security researchers have encountered what's reckoned to be the first spyware menace to target users of mobile phones running the Symbian operating system.

The malware - Mobispy-A - is based on commercial call and SMS recording software and was found bundled in a version of MultiDropper, a mobile phone malware compilation package. If installed, Mobispy-A records incoming and outgoing SMS messages as well as call logs for dialed and received calls. The malware sends this data to an account on a server. However only the purchaser of the commercial software on which Mobispy-A is based has access to this account, which is in any case limited to monitoring call records of one phone.

Jimmy Shah, a mobile anti-virus researcher at McAfee, writes that the significance of the malware is not in the negligible danger it poses but in what it suggests about a possible shift in mobile malware authors' goals from "destroying data and information" to stealing it for profit. ®

Agentless Backup is Not a Myth

More from The Register

 breaking news
NSA PRISM snoop-gate: Won't someone think of the children, wails Apple
10,000 things probed, mostly about missing kids, Alzheimer patients, we're told
 breaking news
NSA PRISM-gate: Relax, GCHQ spooks 'keep us safe', says Cameron
Whatever they are up to, it's all above board, we're told
PRISM snitch claims NSA hacked Chinese targets since 2009
Snowden suddenly looks safer in Hong Kong after revelations
 breaking news
US chief spook: Look, we only want to spy on 6.66 BEELLLION of you
Americans assured they are not in the NSA's sights
Speech-to-text drives motorists to distraction
Will talking to you mean I crash into that car up ahead, Siri?
DHS warns of vulns in hospital medical equipment
Has your doctor's anasthesia machine been hacked?
 breaking news
'BadNews is malware' says outfit that found it
Google says code harmless but Lookout says code base is evolving
Panda-peddlers cuffed for chess gambling gambit
More porridge on the menu for Chinese coders after second offence
 breaking news
Yes, maybe we should keep hackers in the clink for YEARS, mulls EU
Watch out black hats, they just might throw away the key
Microsoft borks botnet takedown in Citadel snafu
Stupid Redmond kicked over our honeypots, wail white hats